River Tweed

“ For Tweed then so overflowed its banks that burn and river joined beside the spot where Merlin lies, which, as Dr. Pennecuick says, "was never before observed to fall out, nor since that time."
Over against Drummelzier, Biggar Water falls into Tweed, and a curious circumstance about this stream is this, that "on the occasion of a large flood... the Clyde actually pours a portion of its water mto one of the tributaries of Tweed." The whole volume of Clyde at Biggar, says Sir Archibald Geikie, could without any difficulty be made to flow into Tweed by way of the Biggar Water. ”

“ The last 2 m. of its course before reaching Berwick are in England. The Tweed is 97 m. long and drains an area of 1870 sq. m. Its bed is pebbly and sandy, and notwithstanding discolorations from manufactures, the stream, owing to its clear and sparkling appearance, still merits the epithet of the "silver Tweed." The river, however, has no estuary, and traffic is chiefly confined to Berwick, though for a short distance above the town some navigation is carried on by barges. The Tweed is one of the best salmon streams in Scotland. ”

“ Behind Newstead, high on the nearest peak of Eildon, are well-defined remains of a Romo-British station. Where they got a sufficient supply of water at that elevation is puzzling: it is a large camp, and could not possibly be held by a numerically weak body of men.
From the head of that "brae" by Newstead that overhangs the river, you will look on a scene typical of Tweed. Far through the broad and smiling valley the river winds towards you, like a ribbon shot with silver ”

“ Dryburgh Abbey lies on the Tweed, about four miles from Melrose. You turn off—when you have left the Eildon hills on your right, and have seen on your left, in the course of the river, the Cowdenknowes, Bemerside, and other classic spots—down a steep and woody lane, and suddenly come out at a wide bend of the river, where, on your side, the gravel brought down by the floods spreads a considerable strand, and the lofty banks all round on the other are finely wooded. Few are the rivers which can show more beautiful scenery in their course than the Tweed. ”

“ And now we may set out once again up Tweed—not forgetting, however, that Peebles with its mills also contributes no small share to the pollution of that much-injured river. A mile or so out of the town, there is the old castle of Neidpath, in very remote days a stronghold of the Frasers of Fruid and Oliver Castle, in Tweedsmuir. A Hay of Yester, ancestor of 341Lord Tweeddale, succeeded the Frasers in 1312, by marriage with the daughter of Sir Simon Fraser ”

“ The bold black figures on the whitened post mark 2 1/2 ft. above orthodox level. Two days ago the 3 ft. point had been reached; then Tweed sank to 2 ft.; now "she" is up again 6 in.
One does not care how high a river may rise, provided it gets over the business once for all, and recedes steadily, to have done with change for a reasonable time. The worst phase of all is that which is represented by intermittent ups and downs on a small scale; for the fish follow the example of the river most religiously in one respect—when it is unsettled they are unsettled too. ”

“ The dwellers along the banks of the Tweed are quite familiar with the fact that the roads which run parallel with the river are smooth and level, for they coincide with the trend of the ridges and hollows; whilst those that cross the country at right angles to this direction must of course traverse ridge after ridge, and are therefore exceedingly uneven. In this low-lying district most of the ridges are composed of superficial deposits of stony and gravelly clay and sand, and the same is the case with those that sweep round the north-eastern spurs of the Cheviots by Coldstream and Ancroft. ”

“ The apple frae the rock as mellow."
CHAPTER XIII UPPER TWEED, YAIR, FAIRNILEE, ASHIESTEEL, EUBANK, INNERLEITHEN, TRAQUAIR Sweet319 in truth flows Tweed here, as all will own who leisurely wend their way—it is too beautiful to justify hurried progress—under leafy boughs where the sun slants down in fairy pattern on a road divorced by but a narrow edge of greenest grass from the clear, hurrying river. Here, at your very hand, you may see countless I! ripples of the rising trout, that feed beneath the elms of Yair." There over against you on the far bank of Tweed is Yair itself ”

“ FROM BERWICK TO KELSO. Leading Characteristics—The View from Berwick—Lindisfarne—The History and Present State of Berwick—Norham Castle and Marmion—Ladykirk—Tillmouth—Twisell Castle and Bridge—Ford Castle and Flodden—Coldstream—Wark Castle—Hadden Rig.
“A bonny water” was the phrase used of the Tweed by a peasant-woman whom Dorothy Wordsworth met when she came to spy out the Border river. Homely as the expression is, it would not be easy to find another quite so meet. To grandeur, to magnificence, the stream can make no claim, either in itself or in its surroundings. ”

“ A "water" is larger than a "burn," but attains not to the name of a river.
Rule, the next tributary as we ascend Teviot, is but a "Water," a pretty trout stream it would be if it had fair play. The question of fishing in this country is knotted. Almost all the trout streams were open to everybody, in my boyhood, when I could fish all day in Tweed or Ale, and never see a rod but my own. The few anglers were sportsmen. "Duffer" as I was, I remember a long summer day on Tweed at Yair, when, having come too late for the ten o'clock "rise" of trout, I had an almost empty creel. ”

“ This is the case with the Tay, Forth, Tweed, Tyne, Humber and Thames, the Clyde and Severn being the most remarkable exceptions to this direction. The whole extent of country from which a river receives its supply of water, by brooks and rivulets, is termed its basin, because a region generally bounded by a rim of high lands, beyond which the waters are drained off into another channel. The basin of a superior river includes those of all its tributary streams. ”

“ The river Allan flows into the Tweed near the site of this bridge. It is a little mountain brook that flows, in serpentine course, through the valley of Glendearg. A mile or so up the rivulet there is a picturesque and shady glen called Fairy Dean. After a flood, little pieces of curious stones, in fantastic shapes, are often found, the play of the waters having transformed the fragments of rock into fairy cups and saucers, guns, boats, cradles, or whatever a childish imagination might suggest. ”

“ All their surroundings are tropical and rich, and never so rich perhaps as in the heart of the country lying about the heads of the Richmond, and northward towards the Tweed River. There we find the vegetation whose density and glory and magnificence must be seen to be realised. ”

“ It may have been that the folk of Tweedside were little caring about any religion, and most unlike the dour carles of the Westlands, or it may have been that they were not yet stirring. At any rate I passed unmolested. I struck straight for the ridge of Dreva, and rounding it, faced the long valley of Tweed, with Rachan woods and Drummelzier haughs and the level lands of Stobo. Far down lay the forest of Dawyck, black as ink on the steep hillside. Down by the Tweed I rode, picking my way very carefully among the marshes, and guarding the deep black moss-holes which yawned in the meadows. ”

“ To be converted into road-metal has doubtless been its fate. There are still, I believe, in Stow, the remains of a very old church, not, however, those of the original church of Wedale.
Leaving Galashiels by road past Boldside, with a glimpse of the Eildons and Abbotsford to the left, three miles from the town and immediately above the junction of Tweed with its tributary the Ettrick we cross the former river. Hard by, to the right, in a wood on top of Rink Hill, are the remains of a very fine British camp. 246Here for the time we again quit the banks of Tweed, and proceed up Ettrick. ”

“ The Tweed is picturesque rather than romantic, as are so many of the Highland rivers. They have their legions of admirers, but there is no Scottish stream that can count so many ardent lovers as the Tweed, and this for many reasons. ”

“ Always upwards, it passes collieries, the “Cat” inn, and the hamlet of Richardson’s Stead or Scremerston, p. 196whence, arrived at the summit of Scremerston Hill, the way down into Tweedmouth and across the Tweed into Berwick is clear.
Tweedmouth sits upon the hither shore of Tweed, clad in grime and clinkers. Like a mudlark dabbling in the water but not cleansing himself in it, Tweedmouth seems to acquire no inconsiderable portion of its dirt from its foreshore. ”

“ Kelso gave bent and direction to his genius.
Like Smailholm, Kelso was “meet nurse for a poetic child”, for here join two “superb rivers”—Tweed and Teviot—each bringing down, from a hundred sources, its treasure of ancient story. As we have said, the beauty and romance of Tweedside do not begin in this neighbourhood. They are the endowment of the main stream from its tap-root to 12 the sea. Berwick-upon-Tweed, for centuries a cause of contention between the Kingdoms, was at one time regarded as separate and apart from each—“England, Scotland, and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed”. ”

“ On a good day in April great baskets are still made in preserved parts of the Tweed, but, if they are made in open water, it must be, I fancy, with worm, or with the “screw,” the larva of the May-fly. The screw is a hideous and venomous-looking animal, which is fixed on a particular kind of tackle, and cast up stream with a short line. The heaviest trout are fond of it, but it can only be used at a season when either school or Oxford keeps one far from what old Franck, Walton’s contemporary, a Cromwellian trooper, calls “the glittering and resolute streams of Tweed.” ”

“ Many districts on the Tweed and Teviot are beautifully wooded, but having regard to the great area once occupied by forest, the acreage under wood is now relatively small.
The county is the principal seat of the tweed and hosiery manufactures in Scotland. Engineering, iron founding, dyeing and tanning are also carried on at Hawick and Jedburgh, ang agricultural implements and machinery, chemical manures and especially fishing tackle are made at Kelso. The salmon fisheries on the Tweed are of considerable value. ”

“ The name "Tweed" suggests romance—unless instead of having read your Scott you have come to its consciousness through the homespun, alas, to-day too often the factory-spun woolens, which are made throughout all Scotland, but still in greatest length on Tweedside.
Dorothy Wordsworth, winsome marrow, who loved the country even better than William, I trow—only why remark it when he himself recognized how his vision was quickened through her companionship?—has spoke the word Tweed—"a name which has been sweet in [Pg 40] my ears almost as far back as I can remember anything." ”

“ One whose only knowledge of the Tweed is gained from what can be seen of it at Berwick, and when the tide is out, would not be likely to think of it more highly than he ought to think. For even at its “latter end” it seems to have [Pg 75] no great sense of the dignity of life; it rolls neither broad nor deep, and does little more than trickle into the larger life to which it has all along so indolently tended. Nor is it here altogether happy in the surroundings which it owes to art and man’s device. ”

“ They come provokingly short, too; just plucking at the hook, and running out a foot of line or so, then taking their departure. For some reason the Tweed is more difficult to fish with the dry fly than—the Test, for example. The water is swifter and very dark, it drowns the fly soon, and on the surface the fly is less easily distinguished than at Whitchurch, in the pellucid streams. The Leader a tributary, may be fished with dry fly; on the Tweed one can hardly manage it. There is a plan by which rising trout may be taken—namely, by baiting with a small red worm and casting as in fly-fishing. ”

“ One cannot reproduce the charm of the strong river in pool and stream, of the steep rich bank that it rushes or lingers by, of the green and heathery hills beyond, or the bare slopes where the blue slate breaks through among the dark old thorn-trees, remnants of the forest. It is all homely and all haunted, and, if a Tweedside fisher might have his desire, he would sleep the long sleep in the little churchyard that lies lonely above the pool of Caddon-foot, and hard by Christopher North’s favourite quarters at Clovenfords. ”

“ The Tawe cannot be much more than twenty-five miles in length, from its source in the lakelet on the Brecknock Van, or summit, of the Fforest Fawr Mountains, to the Swansea Docks. As fully half its course is through a colliery district, it may be supposed that its claims to beauty cannot be of the strongest. But the Neath river has taught us that these South Wales streams cannot be judged thus summarily. One must, therefore, proceed up the long valley of Tawe in the hope of charms other than those that emanate from pit-gear, long chimneys, and factories. ”

“ Some twigs which are bare, and weeds, begin to glitter with hoary light. The very edge or outline of a tawny or russet hill has this hoary light on it. Your thoughts sparkle like the water surface and the downy twigs. From the shore you look back on the silver-plated river.
Every rain exposes new arrow-heads. We stop at Clamshell, and dabble for a moment in the relics of a departed race.
When we emerged from the pleasant footpath through the birches at Witherel Glade, the glittering white tufts of the Andropogon scoparius lit up by the sun were affectingly fair and cheering to behold. ”